1.30pm BST

Avalanche buries Austrian street

A large avalanche has buried a street near a popular Austrian ski resort under four metres of snow, with authorities warning of a "substantial" risk that more may follow.

Rescue workers searching the road in Imst, in the province of Tyrol, do not believe anyone was buried in the avalanche.

Imst is near Soelden, which hosts world cup skiing competitions and attracts hundreds of thousands of recreational skiers and snowboarders.

Authorities said heavy rainfall across the region in the hours before the avalanche may have triggered the slide.

Austria's avalanche monitoring agency today warned that the risk of snow slides above 1,800m was "substantial". The alert level has been raised to three on a five-point scale.

Dozens of avalanches occur in Austria each year, often in spring, when thawing snow and ice makes slopes unstable. Many slides prove fatal. In January, five people were killed on a single weekend. Last year, 102 fatal avalanches were recorded across the Alps.